


Nociception, One: Charles

by ninemoons42



Series: Serial Killer 'Verse [6]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Broken!Erik, Dark!Charles, M/M, Serial Killers, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Nociception, One: Charles

  
title: Nociception, One: Charles  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 1390  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr. mention of Kurt Marko [not named] and Raven Darkholme  
rating: R  
notes: Part of the universe of [Knife and Needle and Rope](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/tag/story+arc:+serial+killer+%27verse), in which matters begin to work up to the climax of the arc, and in which we find out about Charles's backstory.  
Warning for basically most serial killer / murder mystery tropes and everything else that might be associated with the idea of a dark version of Charles Xavier, including child abuse.

  
Charles eyes the padded bench carefully, and as he walks around it he catches sight of his reflection, multiple copies of him, in the mirrors hung all around the little studio.

There are no windows in here, and it is almost always too warm that it’s stifling, and every time he breathes he feels like he’s coating his throat in ink and blood, dense enough for the grit to lodge in his teeth.

He likes it here. Raw human emotion spilled out onto bared skin, coaxed into form with needles and patient hands. It is a far better place than outside, and it is a far better place than Charles’s memories.

[A voice in his memories. He’s forgotten the face and the man, deliberately. But he still remembers the words sometimes and the words still sting, in a distant faraway part of him that still remembers that past.]

Charles takes a deep breath, and takes off his shirt. Backs up to one of the mirrors, steps in as close as he can, and looks carefully over his shoulder.

There is such detail in the curves and feathers of the great black bird spreading its wings on his skin. He can make out the strength and the incongruous lightness of the bones in its skeleton, gently hinted at in the lines of ink. The sinuous sweep of tail feathers hints at power and grace. It’s amazing, how ink on paper could be so transmuted into ink on skin, and there must be so much of it in him now that his blood must have darkened, turned him into something so strange and so other, maybe something akin to the beast he now bears on his back. Almost complete.

[This is so much better than the welts and the long lines of blood, congealing into a single misshapen scar covering most of his back. The ink flowed into those easily and held fast. He remembers not really feeling it, and he remembers being glad. The ink covers everything and hides nothing.]

Movement in one of the other mirrors and Charles shakes his head and folds up his shirt. He moves to the padded workbench and lies down on his stomach. His shirt is rough and worn under his cheek.

[He remembers a time when even lying down in his own bed hurt, hurt like he’d been set on fire, like he’d been shot up and torn to pieces. He remembers gingerly checking himself over for the worst of the injuries. He remembers hours of gritting his teeth, and sleep forever out of reach, when he needed it desperately. To heal and to forget.]

Erik moves quietly around him; he pulls up a chair and it barely squeaks. The tattoo machine hums and whirs pleasantly; Erik’s fingers tap out a cleansing rhythm on his skin. His skin is warm on Charles’s, even through the bright blue disposable gloves.

Warmth is good. This kind of pain is good, even as it makes Charles clench his teeth, breath hissing out as the needle tracks along the burning skin of his right shoulder blade. Erik murmurs apologies with every soothing swipe of damp cloth.

It all fades into the background, slowly, even as Charles detaches. His knuckles show white through his skin, his fists clench and unclench. The discomfort burrows into him, worms its way into his bones and he takes it in and makes it part of himself.

This may be familiar, but at least Charles has chosen this. The pain is necessary for the result he desires. It is nothing like the old pains, the old hurts that still force him to huddle in coats and hide his winces, on the bitterest nights.

[How many of his bones have been broken? Do the doctors and the nurses and the ER staff remember him? Mousy brown hair, eyes squeezed shut or downcast. Probably not. Too afraid to cry or shout or talk about who’d been laying into him, not even when he was there again and again and over the stretch of one miserable summer when he had been there night after night for four bad nights in a row.]

Somehow he knows before Erik moves, and Charles just barely manages to look up and into the other man’s eyes. Erik is bending over him, murmuring about painkillers. Charles shakes his head.

[That which shivers and shakes and gibbers within him is but a tiny part, a remnant, a distant memory of the person he’d been.]

Brief touch of fingertips to the top of his head. Erik gets up and leaves the room, whispers about coming back.

This is not good. Charles is alone with his thoughts. The calendar back in his flat indicates the month but all he sees when he looks at it is tomorrow’s date. Black line drawn through the number - black lines. They seem to multiply every time he looks at the calendar. Uncapped pens on the kitchen counter. He’s taken to cleaning them up every morning just before Raven wakes up.

He doesn’t notice Erik coming back - just senses a movement in the mirrors and it’s a miracle he doesn’t go for his knife, for the coils of rope in his bag. Perhaps he has developed a sense for the tall, gangly man with the haunted eyes and the strangely old-fashioned oversized eyeglasses. Perhaps after all this time spent together, a bare handful of conversations over books and music, he might know Erik.

Charles senses the movement of the needle once again tracking ink into his skin and now he can almost relax into it. He’s familiar with this. Deep breath as the needle whines and scrapes into bone. Glitterflash of pain, and this one is almost delicious.

Now time passes quickly and it feels as if the next time Charles blinks, there is silence in the little room. The soft, labored rhythm of Erik’s breathing. So easy to reach out for him, here, now, even with Charles lying down and his eyes closed. He could reach for Erik’s throat, feel the pulse beneath the lined skin, feel the man gasp in and out for his breath.

No. No. Charles forces himself to open his clenched fists. Deep imprints of his nails into his skin, the crescents going pale and then darkening again as the blood rushes back. This is Erik. This is not...that man. That man who made Charles’s life hell for thirteen long years.

That man is no more than bones and worm waste, now, and Charles can still point to exactly where he is, where he’s been for some time now. He has the memory of the place imprinted into him, deeper than coordinates, branded into his mind in one of its distant corners.

He shoves the thought aside - no use thinking about it now - and he barely hears Erik murmuring to him. The tattoo is finished, his lips say. I’m done. It’s done.

Charles walks up to the mirrors again and he turns, carefully, and there it is. Ink and blood still welling up at the upper edges of the wings, up and over his shoulder blades. The rest of the phoenix is mottled bruising from the long hours of application - but the final shades are showing through and it is nothing at all like the initial sketches.

It is a magnificent thing. It is a true work of art.

And for that Erik will be rewarded, Charles thinks. Time to get out of his life.

He reaches for the bundle of banknotes in his bag - his fingers brush past the rope and the bag of salt and the dark knitted hat - and he presses the whole thing into Erik’s stained hand, and brushes past. It hurts to put on his shirt, his jacket, and it hurts to fend off Erik’s protests. It hurts to turn away, and it hurts to know he cannot be seen around the man again.

Charles walks out the door, into the forbidding night, and he knows that in another hour or two it will be the date marked on the calendar at home and he has someplace to be, a name to remember and a memory of blood on his own hands.

He doesn’t look back.

Oh, how he wants to.

He closes his hand around his knife instead.  



End file.
